Bighead carp gill rakers

Toward a one-day conference devoted to the Gill-Oxygen Limitation Theory

Bighead carp gill rakers

Bighead carp gill rakers. Photo by Invasive Carp Regional Coordinating Committee, Flickr.

At the last annual meeting of the FishBase Consortium, held 5-7 September 2023 in Tervuren, Belgium, it was decided that the next FishBase/SeaLifeBase Symposium, traditionally held before the FishBase Consortium meeting, to be held in early September 2024 in Thessaloniki, Greece, would last two days, with the first devoted to a session on the Gill-Oxygen Limitation Theory, or GOLT.

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Dead Fish Washed Ashore during Golden Alga Toxic Bloom

Large fish more vulnerable to climate change-induced fish kills

Dead Fish Washed Ashore during Golden Alga Toxic Bloom

Reference image of dead fish washed ashore during a golden algae toxic bloom. Photo by Michael Hooper, USGS.

Climate change-induced droughts and fish kills affect larger fish more severely than smaller individuals, according to new research.

In a paper published in Environmental Biology of Fishes, researchers from Leiden University, Sportvisserij Zuidwest Nederland and the Sea Around Us initiative at the University of British Columbia compared evidence from drought-induced fish kills in the Netherlands, fisheries management literature and multiple physiological studies. They confirmed that when water gets warmer and deoxygenated, larger and older individuals within a species tend to die in greater numbers than their smaller and younger counterparts.

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